Subjected to Futility – On Conversations about the Nashville Shooting

Six victims and the shooter all dead in Nashville.

Seven families grieve.

Unimaginable suffering for those who loved them. Lives forever changed.

The rush to pontificate on this tragedy takes my breath away.

Tweets, monologues, news conferences, editorials, and opinion posts commenting as if they know why, as if they know who, as if they know how.

It’s obscene.

Life is sacred. When it is stolen, there should be silence.

Not just a moment. We should be silent for hours, days, a week of national lament where all we do is consider the immense value of a single life. Where all we do is fall face down before God and wait for the Holy Spirit to pray on our behalf.

When we see the faces of those who are gone, how can anyone mock? How can anyone presume? How can anyone blame or politicize or pontificate?

We sit safely ensconced behind our screens speaking into microphones with no faces or typing on keyboards that do not weep. There is no bravery in this.

Brave are those who sit in silence with parents, siblings, grandparents, children, spouses, friends of the dead and confess to having no answers.

Brave are those who wait with opinions, at least until the smell of gunpowder dissipates, at least until the shock settles, at least until the police catch their breath from witnessing tiny bodies ravaged by gunfire.

Brave are parents and spouses soothing children and adults who witnessed events that have scarred soldiers on the battlefield. Brave are those who love the first responders and medical examiner reeling from the aftermath of this violence.

Brave are those who stand beside loved ones who hear their child or the adult they loved discussed by strangers—dismissed or condemned, hated or lamented, employed as pawns or shared as a meme on social media.

It’s one thing to know we live in a fallen, sinful world. This is what it’s really like to live here.

When sin entered the world, it didn’t just impact individuals. Sin infected the whole system. It’s not just an individual story. It’s the story WE live and endure together until Jesus returns.

Paul writes this: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.  For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.  For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope  that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.” Romans 8:18-22 esv

This is what it means to be subject to futility. These lives are gone and the sin of the world, not just the choices of one person, contributed to what happened.

We suffer.

We cry out for deliverance.

We groan, longing to be set free from this fallenness where children are gunned down, damaged by the world’s confusing rhetoric, hurt by words, subject to abuse, or tempted to rely on their own wisdom to settle scores.

Where wisdom is ignored in the aftermath in favor of ratings, clicks, votes, shares, scores settled or points made.

These lives were not designed to be illustrations in your next speech. They were meant for so much more.

Refuse to engage. Insist that discussions around you focus on the inherent value of each life made in the image of a loving God.

Be silent. Weep. Mourn. Lament. Pray. Listen for God.

Go to the Psalms and know that others have suffered before us and yet, God reigns.

“As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, ‘Where is your God?’  Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” Psalm 42:10-11 esv

Refuse to speak until lives have been honored and wisdom speaks louder than the speculation of fools. It will be worth the wait.

Subjected to Futility The only reasonable response in the immediate aftermath of death https://t.co/nM3tL10rcD #NashvilleCovenantSchool #Nashvilleschool

— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) March 30, 2023